A potentiometric electronic tongue with 36 cross-sensibility lipo/polymeric membranes was built and applied for semi-quantitative and quantitative analysis of non-alcoholic beverages. A total of 16 commercial fruit juices (e.g., orange, pineapple, mango and peach) from five different brands were studied. In the semi-quantitative approach, the signal profiles recorded by the device were used together with a stepwise linear discriminant analysis to differentiate four beverage groups with different fruit juice contents: >30%, 14–30%, 6–10% and <4%. The model, with two discriminant functions based on the signals of only four polymeric membranes, explained 99% of the total variability of experimental data and was able to classify the studied samples into the correct group with an overall sensibility and specificity of 100% for the original data, and greater than 93% for the cross-validation procedure.
The signals were also used to obtain MLR and PLS calibration models to estimate and predict the concentrations of fructose and glucose in the soft drinks. The linear models established were based on the signals recorded by 16 polymeric membranes and were able to estimate and predict satisfactorily (cross-validation) the concentrations of the two sugars (R2 greater than 0.96 and 0.84, respectively).
Financial support received from FCT, Lisbon, under research projects POCI/QUI/58706/2004 and PPCDT/QUI/58076/2004, is gratefully acknowledged
